Towards greater regulatory co-operation in the Asia-Pacific for boosting e-commerce trade

The Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for over 50% of the world’s population and over 35% of the world’s gross domestic product, is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. With high economic growth, the APAC region has become the largest e-commerce market in the world. A policy push towards digitalisation by key countries and the Covid-19) pandemic has further facilitated the growth of e-commerce in this region with consumers and micro, small and medium enterprises increasingly using e-commerce platforms. The sudden growth of e-commerce disrupted traditional supply chains in the APAC region and created the need for a robust and predictable regulatory environment to facilitate the ease of doing business, both domestic and cross-border, while simultaneously addressing issues like consumer safety and privacy. Given this background, the objective of this paper is to: examine the growth of e-commerce in the Asia-Pacific region identify the growth drivers and the contribution of the sector to MSMEs, women entrepreneurs, and allied sectors like express delivery services examine the policy landscape and how it is evolving in APAC countries with a focus on learning from each other’s best practices identify the policy and other challenges such as those related to cross-border data sharing, consumer privacy, cross-border payments and gaps in paperless trade that may impact the current and/or future growth of the e-commerce sector and its users and make recommendations to facilitate cross border e-commerce trade and help users of e-commerce platforms like MSMEs and women entrepreneurs enhance their global reach.